XVIII
THE LITTLE PINCUSHION
The verdict rendered by the Coroner's jury showed it to be a more discriminating set of men than I had calculated upon. It was murder inflicted by a hand unknown.
I was so gratified by this that I left the court-room in quite an agitated frame of mind, so agitated, indeed, that I walked through one door instead of another, and thus came unexpectedly upon a group formed almost exclusively of the Van Burnam family.
Starting back, for I dislike anything that looks like intrusion, especially when no great end is to be gained by it, I was about to retrace my steps when I felt two soft arms about my neck.
"Oh, Miss Butterworth, isn't it a mercy that this dreadful thing is over! I don't know when I have ever felt anything so keenly."
It was Isabella Van Burnam.
Startled, for the embraces bestowed on me are few, I gave a subdued sort of grunt, which nevertheless did not displease this young lady, for her arms tightened, and she murmured in my ear: "You dear old soul! I like you so much."
"We are going to be very good neighbors," cooed a still sweeter voice in my other ear. "Papa says we must call on you soon." And Caroline's demure face looked around into mine in a manner some would have thought exceedingly bewitching.
"Thank you, pretty poppets!" I returned, freeing myself as speedily as possible from embraces the sincerity of which I felt open to question. "My house is always open to you." And with little ceremony, I walked steadily out and betook myself to the carriage awaiting me.
I looked upon this display of feeling as the mere gush of two over-excited young women, and was therefore somewhat astonished when I was interrupted in my afternoon nap by an announcement that the two Misses Van Burnam awaited me in the parlor.
Going down, I saw them standing there hand in hand and both as white as a sheet.
"O Miss Butterworth!" they cried, springing towards me, "Howard has been arrested, and we have no one to say a word of comfort to us."
"Arrested!" I repeated, greatly surprised, for I had not expected it to happen so soon, if it happened at all.
"Yes, and father is just about prostrated. Franklin, too, but he keeps up, while father has shut himself into his room and won't see anybody, not even us. O, I don't know how we are to bear it! Such a disgrace, and such a wicked, wicked shame! For Howard never had anything to do with his wife's death, had he, Miss Butterworth?"
"No," I returned, taking my ground at once, and vigorously, for I really believed what I said. "He is innocent of her death, and I would like the chance of proving it."
They evidently had not expected such an unqualified assertion from me, for they almost smothered me with kisses, and called me their only friend! and indeed showed so much real feeling this time that I neither pushed them away nor tried to withdraw myself from their embraces.
When their emotions were a little exhausted I led them to a sofa and sat down before them. They were motherless girls, and my heart, if hard, is not made of adamant or entirely unsusceptible to the calls of pity and friendship.
"Girls," said I, "if you will be calm, I should like to ask you a few questions."
"Ask us anything," returned Isabella; "nobody has more right to our confidence than you."
This was another of their exaggerated expressions, but I was so anxious to hear what they had to tell, I let it pass. So instead of rebuking them, I asked where their brother had been arrested, and found it had been at his rooms and in presence of themselves and Franklin. So I inquired further and learned that, so far as they knew, nothing had been discovered beyond what had come out at the inquest except that Howard's trunks had been found packed, as if he had been making preparations for a journey when interrupted by the dreadful event which had put him into the hands of the police. As there was a certain significance in this, the girls seemed almost as much impressed by it as I was, but we did not discuss it long, for I suddenly changed my manner, and taking them both by the hand, asked if they could keep a secret.
"Secret?" they gasped.
"Yes, a secret. You are not the girls I should confide in ordinarily; but this trouble has sobered you."
"O, we can do anything," began Isabella; and "Only try us," murmured Caroline.
But knowing the volubility of the one and the weakness of the other, I shook my head at their promises, and merely tried to impress them with the fact that their brother's safety depended upon their discretion. At which they looked very determined for poppets, and squeezed my hands so tightly that I wished I had left off some of my rings before engaging in this interview.
When they were quiet again and ready to listen I told them my plans. They were surprised, of course, and wondered how I could do anything towards finding out the real murderer of their sister-in-law; but seeing how resolved I looked, changed their tone and avowed with much feeling their perfect confidence in me and in the success of anything I might undertake.
This was encouraging, and ignoring their momentary distrust, I proceeded to say:
"But for me to be successful in this matter, no one must know my interest in it. You must pay me no visits, give me no confidences, nor, if you can help it, mention my name before any one, not even before your father and brother. So much for precautionary measures, my dears; and now for the active ones. I have no curiosity, as I think you must see, but I shall have to ask you a few questions which under other circumstances would savor more or less of impertinence. Had your sister-in-law any special admirers among the other sex?"
"Oh," protested Caroline, shrinking back, while Isabella's eyes grew round as a frightened child's. "None that we ever heard of. She wasn't that kind of a woman, was she, Belle? It wasn't for any such reason papa didn't like her."
"No, no, that would have been too dreadful. It was her family we objected to, that's all."
"Well, well," I apologized, tapping their hands reassuringly, "I only asked—let me now say—from curiosity, though I have not a particle of that quality, I assure you."
"Did you think—did you have any idea—" faltered Caroline, "that–"
"Never mind," I interrupted. "You must let my words go in one ear and out of the other after you have answered them. I wish"—here I assumed a brisk air—"that I could go through your parlors again before every trace of the crime perpetrated there has been removed."
"Why, you can," replied Isabella.
"There is no one in them now," added Caroline, "Franklin went out just before we left."
At which I blandly rose, and following their leadership, soon found myself once again in the Van Burnam mansion.
My first glance upon re-entering the parlors was naturally directed towards the spot where the tragedy had taken place. The cabinet had been replaced and the shelves set back upon it; but the latter were empty, and neither on them nor on the adjacent mantel-piece did I see the clock. This set me thinking, and I made up my mind to have another look at that clock. By dint of judicious questions I found that it had been carried into the third room, where we soon found it lying on a shelf of the same closet where the hat had been discovered by Mr. Gryce. Franklin had put it there, fearing that the sight of it might affect Howard, and from the fact that the hands stood as I had left them, I gathered that neither he nor any of the family had discovered that it was in running condition.
Assured of this, I astonished them by requesting to have it taken down and set up on the table, which they had no sooner done than it started to tick just as it had done under my hand a few nights before.
The girls, greatly startled, surveyed each other wonderingly.
"Why, it's going!" cried Caroline.
"Who could have wound it!" marvelled Isabella.
"Hark!" I cried. The clock had begun to strike.
It gave forth five clear notes.
"Well, it's a mystery!" Isabella exclaimed. Then seeing no astonishment in my face, she added: "Did you know about this, Miss Butterworth?"
"My dear girls," I hastened to say, with all the impressiveness characteristic of me in my more serious moments. "I do not expect you to ask me for any information I do not volunteer. This is hard, I know; but some day I will be perfectly frank with you. Are you willing to accept my aid on these terms?"
"O yes," they gasped, but they looked not a little disappointed.
"And now," said I, "leave the clock where it is, and when your brother comes home, show it to him, and say that having the curiosity to examine it you were surprised to find it going, and that you had left it there for him to see. He will be surprised also, and as a consequence will question first you and then the police to find out who wound it. If they acknowledge having done it, you must notify me at once, for that's what I want to know. Do you understand, Caroline? And, Isabella, do you feel that you can go through all this without dropping a word concerning me and my interest in this matter?"
Of course they answered yes, and of course it was with so much effusiveness that I was obliged to remind them that they must keep a check on their enthusiasm, and also to suggest that they should not come to my house or send me any notes, but simply a blank card, signifying: "No one knows who wound the clock."
"How delightfully mysterious!" cried Isabella. And with this girlish exclamation our talk in regard to the clock closed.
The next object that attracted our attention was a paper-covered novel I discovered on a side-table in the same room.
"Whose is this?" I asked.
"Not mine."
"Not mine."
"Yet it was published this summer," I remarked.
They stared at me astonished, and Isabella caught up the book. It was one of those summer publications intended mainly for railroad distribution, and while neither ragged nor soiled, bore evidence of having been read.
"Let me take it," said I.
Isabella at once passed it into my hands.
"Does your brother smoke?" I asked.
"Which brother?"
"Either of them."
"Franklin sometimes, but Howard, never. It disagrees with him, I believe."
"There is a faint odor of tobacco about these pages. Can it have been brought here by Franklin?"
"O no, he never reads novels, not such novels as this, at all events. He loses a lot of pleasure, we think."
I turned the pages over. The latter ones were so fresh I could almost put my finger on the spot where the reader had left off. Feeling like a bloodhound who has just run upon a trail, I returned the book to Caroline, with the injunction to put it away; adding, as I saw her air of hesitation: "If your brother Franklin misses it, it will show that he brought it here, and then I shall have no further interest in it." Which seemed to satisfy her, for she put it away at once on a high shelf.
Perceiving nothing else in these rooms of a suggestive character, I led the way into the hall. There I had a new idea.
"Which of you was the first to go through the rooms upstairs?" I inquired.
"Both of us," answered Isabella. "We came together. Why do you ask, Miss Butterworth?"
"I was wondering if you found everything in order there?"
"We did not notice anything wrong, did we, Caroline? Do you think that the—the person who committed that awful crime went up-stairs? I couldn't sleep a wink if I thought so."
"Nor I," Caroline put in. "O, don't say that he went up-stairs, Miss Butterworth!"
"I do not know it," I rejoined.
"But you asked–"
"And I ask again. Wasn't there some little thing out of its usual place? I was up in your front chamber after water for a minute, but I didn't touch anything but the mug."
"We missed the mug, but—O Caroline, the pin-cushion! Do you suppose Miss Butterworth means the pin-cushion?"
I started. Did she refer to the one I had picked up from the floor and placed on a side-table?
"What about the pin-cushion?" I asked.
"O nothing, but we did not know what to make of its being on the table. You see, we had a little pin-cushion shaped like a tomato which always hung at the side of our bureau. It was tied to one of the brackets and was never taken off; Caroline having a fancy for it because it kept her favorite black pins out of the reach of the neighbor's children when they came here. Well, this cushion, this sacred cushion which none of us dared touch, was found by us on a little table by the door, with the ribbon hanging from it by which it had been tied to the bureau. Some one had pulled it off, and very roughly too, for the ribbon was all ragged and torn. But there is nothing in a little thing like that to interest you, is there, Miss Butterworth?"
"No," said I, not relating my part in the affair; "not if our neighbor's children were the marauders."
"But none of them came in for days before we left."
"Are there pins in the cushion?"
"When we found it, do you mean? No."
I did not remember seeing any, but one cannot always trust to one's memory.
"But you had left pins in it?"
"Possibly, I don't remember. Why should I remember such a thing as that?"
I thought to myself, "I would know whether I left pins on my pin-cushion or not," but every one is not as methodical as I am, more's the pity.
"Have you anywhere about you a pin like those you keep on that cushion?" I inquired of Caroline.
She felt at her belt and neck and shook her head.
"I may have upstairs," she replied.
"Then get me one." But before she could start, I pulled her back. "Did either of you sleep in that room last night?"
"No, we were going to," answered Isabella, "but afterwards Caroline took a freak to sleep in one of the rooms on the third floor. She said she wanted to get away from the parlors as far as possible."
"Then I should like a peep at the one overhead."
The wrenching of the pin-cushion from its place had given me an idea.
They looked at me wistfully as they turned to mount the stairs, but I did not enlighten them further. What would an idea be worth shared by them!
Their father undoubtedly lay in the back room, for they moved very softly around the head of the stairs, but once in front they let their tongues run loose again. I, who cared nothing for their babble when it contained no information, walked slowly about the room and finally stopped before the bed.
It had a fresh look, and I at once asked them if it had been lately made up. They assured me that it had not, saying that they always kept their beds spread during their absence, as they did so hate to enter a room disfigured by bare mattresses.
I could have read them a lecture on the niceties of housekeeping, but I refrained; instead of that I pointed to a little dent in the smooth surface of the bed nearest the door.
"Did either of you two make that?" I asked.
They shook their heads in amazement.
"What is there in that?" began Caroline; but I motioned her to bring me the little cushion, which she no sooner did than I laid it in the little dent, which it fitted to a nicety.
"You wonderful old thing!" exclaimed Caroline. "How ever did you think–"
But I stopped her enthusiasm with a look. I may be wonderful, but I am not old, and it is time they knew it.
"Mr. Gryce is old," said I; and lifting the cushion, I placed it on a perfectly smooth portion of the bed. "Now take it up," said I, when, lo! a second dent similar to the first.
"You see where that cushion has lain before being placed on the table," I remarked, and reminding Caroline of the pin I wanted, I took my leave and returned to my own house, leaving behind me two girls as much filled with astonishment as the giddiness of their pates would allow.
XIX
A DECIDED STEP FORWARD
I felt that I had made an advance. It was a small one, no doubt, but it was an advance. It would not do to rest there, however, or to draw definite conclusions from what I had seen without further facts to guide me. Mrs. Boppert could supply these facts, or so I believed. Accordingly I decided to visit Mrs. Boppert.
Not knowing whether Mr. Gryce had thought it best to put a watch over my movements, but taking it for granted that it would be like him to do so, I made a couple of formal calls on the avenue before I started eastward. I had learned Mrs. Boppert's address before leaving home, but I did not ride directly to the tenement where she lived. I chose, instead, to get out at a little fancy store I saw in the neighborhood.
It was a curious place. I never saw so many or such variety of things in one small spot in my life, but I did not waste any time upon this quaint interior, but stepped immediately up to the good woman I saw leaning over the counter.
"Do you know a Mrs. Boppert who lives at 803?" I asked.
The woman's look was too quick and suspicious for denial; but she was about to attempt it, when I cut her short by saying:
"I wish to see Mrs. Boppert very much, but not in her own rooms. I will pay any one well who will assist me to five minutes' conversation with her in such a place, say, as that I see behind the glass door at the end of this very shop."
The woman, startled by so unexpected a proposition, drew back a step, and was about to shake her head, when I laid on the counter before her (shall I say how much? Yes, for it was not thrown away) a five-dollar bill, which she no sooner saw than she gave a gasp of delight.
"Will you give me that?" she cried.
For answer I pushed it towards her, but before her fingers could clutch it, I resolutely said:
"Mrs. Boppert must not know there is anybody waiting here to see her, or she will not come. I have no ill-will towards her, and mean her only good, but she's a timid sort of person, and–"
"I know she's timid," broke in the good woman, eagerly. "And she's had enough to make her so! What with policemen drumming her up at night, and innocent-looking girls and boys luring her into corners to tell them what she saw in that grand house where the murder took place, she's grown that feared of her shadow you can hardly get her out after sundown. But I think I can get her here; and if you mean her no harm, why, ma'am–" Her fingers were on the bill, and charmed with the feel of it, she forgot to finish her sentence.
"Is there any one in the room back there?" I asked, anxious to recall her to herself.
"No, ma'am, no one at all. I am a poor widder, and not used to such company as you; but if you will sit down, I will make myself look more fit and have Mrs. Boppert over here in a minute." And calling to some one of the name of Susie to look after the shop, she led the way towards the glass door I have mentioned.
Relieved to find everything working so smoothly and determined to get the worth of my money out of Mrs. Boppert when I saw her, I followed the woman into the most crowded room I ever entered. The shop was nothing to it; there you could move without hitting anything; here you could not. There were tables against every wall, and chairs where there were no tables. Opposite me was a window-ledge filled with flowering plants, and at my right a grate and mantel-piece covered, that is the latter, with innumerable small articles which had evidently passed a long and forlorn probation on the shop shelves before being brought in here. While I was looking at them and marvelling at the small quantity of dust I found, the woman herself disappeared behind a stack of boxes, for which there was undoubtedly no room in the shop. Could she have gone for Mrs. Boppert already, or had she slipped into another room to hide the money which had come so unexpectedly into her hands?
I was not long left in doubt, for in another moment she returned with a flower-bedecked cap on her smooth gray head, that transformed her into a figure at once so complacent and so ridiculous that, had my nerves not been made of iron, I should certainly have betrayed my amusement. With it she had also put on her company manner, and what with the smiles she bestowed upon me and her perfect satisfaction with her own appearance, I had all I could do to hold my own and keep her to the matter in hand. Finally she managed to take in my anxiety and her own duty, and saying that Mrs. Boppert could never refuse a cup of tea, offered to send her an invitation to supper. As this struck me favorably, I nodded, at which she cocked her head on one side and insinuatingly whispered:
"And would you pay for the tea, ma'am?"
I uttered an indignant "No!" which seemed to surprise her. Immediately becoming humble again, she replied it was no matter, that she had tea enough and that the shop would supply cakes and crackers; to all of which I responded with a look which awed her so completely that she almost dropped the dishes with which she was endeavoring to set one of the tables.
"She does so hate to talk about the murder that it will be a perfect godsend to her to drop into good company like this with no prying neighbors about. Shall I set a chair for you, ma'am?"
I declined the honor, saying that I would remain seated where I was, adding, as I saw her about to go:
"Let her walk straight in, and she will be in the middle of the room before she sees me. That will suit her and me too; for after she has once seen me, she won't be frightened. But you are not to listen at the door."
This I said with great severity, for I saw the woman was becoming very curious, and having said it, I waved her peremptorily away.
She didn't like it, but a thought of the five dollars comforted her. Casting one final look at the table, which was far from uninvitingly set, she slipped out and I was left to contemplate the dozen or so photographs that covered the walls. I found them so atrocious and their arrangement so distracting to my bump of order, which is of a pronounced character, that I finally shut my eyes on the whole scene, and in this attitude began to piece my thoughts together. But before I had proceeded far, steps were heard in the shop, and the next moment the door flew open and in popped Mrs. Boppert, with a face like a peony in full blossom. She stopped when she saw me and stared.
"Why, if it isn't the lady–"
"Hush! Shut the door. I have something very particular to say to you."
"O," she began, looking as if she wanted to back out. But I was too quick for her. I shut the door myself and, taking her by the arm, seated her in the corner.
"You don't show much gratitude," I remarked.
I did not know what she had to be grateful to me for, but she had so plainly intimated at our first interview that she regarded me as having done her some favor, that I was disposed to make what use of it I could, to gain her confidence.
"I know, ma'am, but if you could see how I've been harried, ma'am. It's the murder, and nothing but the murder all the time; and it was to get away from the talk about it that I came here, ma'am, and now it's you I see, and you'll be talking about it too, or why be in such a place as this, ma'am?"
"And what if I do talk about it? You know I'm your friend, or I never would have done you that good turn the morning we came upon the poor girl's body."
"I know, ma'am, and grateful I am for it, too; but I've never understood it, ma'am. Was it to save me from being blamed by the wicked police, or was it a dream you had, and the gentleman had, for I've heard what he said at the inquest, and it's muddled my head till I don't know where I'm standing."
What I had said and what the gentleman had said! What did the poor thing mean? As I did not dare to show my ignorance, I merely shook my head.
"Never mind what caused us to speak as we did, as long as we helped you. And we did help you? The police never found out what you had to do with this woman's death, did they?"
"No, ma'am, O no, ma'am. When such a respectable lady as you said that you saw the young lady come into the house in the middle of the night, how was they to disbelieve it. They never asked me if I knew any different."
"No," said I, almost struck dumb by my success, but letting no hint of my complacency escape me. "And I did not mean they should. You are a decent woman, Mrs. Boppert, and should not be troubled."
"Thank you, ma'am. But how did you know she had come to the house before I left. Did you see her?"
I hate a lie as I do poison, but I had to exercise all my Christian principles not to tell one then.
"No," said I, "I didn't see her, but I don't always have to use my eyes to know what is going on in my neighbor's houses." Which is true enough, if it is somewhat humiliating to confess it.
"O ma'am, how smart you are, ma'am! I wish I had some smartness in me. But my husband had all that. He was a man—O what's that?"
"Nothing but the tea-caddy; I knocked it over with my elbow."
"How I do jump at everything! I'm afraid of my own shadow ever since I saw that poor thing lying under that heap of crockery."
"I don't wonder."
"She must have pulled those things over herself, don't you think so, ma'am? No one went in there to murder her. But how came she to have those clothes on. She was dressed quite different when I let her in. I say it's all a muddle, ma'am, and it will be a smart man as can explain it."
"Or a smart woman," I thought.
"Did I do wrong, ma'am? That's what plagues me. She begged so hard to come in, I didn't know how to shut the door on her. Besides her name was Van Burnam, or so she told me."
Here was a coil. Subduing my surprise, I remarked:
"If she asked you to let her in, I do not see how you could refuse her. Was it in the morning or late in the afternoon she came?"
"Don't you know, ma'am? I thought you knew all about it from the way you talked."
Had I been indiscreet? Could she not bear questioning? Eying her with some severity, I declared in a less familiar tone than any I had yet used:
"Nobody knows more about it than I do, but I do not know just the hour at which this lady came to the house. But I do not ask you to tell me if you do not want to."
"O ma'am," she humbly remonstrated, "I am sure I am willing to tell you everything. It was in the afternoon while I was doing the front basement floor."
"And she came to the basement door?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And asked to be let in?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Young Mrs. Van Burnam?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dressed in a black and white plaid silk, and wearing a hat covered with flowers?"
"Yes, ma'am, or something like that. I know it was very bright and becoming."
"And why did she come to the basement door—a lady dressed like that?"
"Because she knew I couldn't open the front door; that I hadn't the key. O she talked beautiful, ma'am, and wasn't proud with me a bit. She made me let her stay in the house, and when I said it would be dark after a while and that I hadn't done nothing to the rooms upstairs, she laughed and said she didn't care, that she wasn't afraid of the dark and had just as lieve as not stay in the big house alone all night, for she had a book—Did you say anything, ma'am?"
"No, no, go on, she had a book."
"Which she could read till she got sleepy. I never thought anything would happen to her."
"Of course not, why should you? And so you let her into the house and left her there when you went out of it? Well, I don't wonder you were shocked to see her lying dead on the floor next morning."
"Awful, ma'am. I was afraid they would blame me for what had happened. But I didn't do nothing to make her die. I only let her stay in the house. Do you think they will do anything to me if they know it?"
"No," said I, trying to understand this woman's ignorant fears, "they don't punish such things. More's the pity!"—this in confidence to myself. "How could you know that a piece of furniture would fall on her before morning. Did you lock her in when you left the house?"
"Yes, ma'am. She told me to."
Then she was a prisoner.
Confounded by the mystery of the whole affair, I sat so still the woman looked up in wonder, and I saw I had better continue my questions.
"What reason did she give for wanting to stay in the house all night?"
"What reason, ma'am? I don't know. Something about her having to be there when Mr. Van Burnam came home. I didn't make it out, and I didn't try to. I was too busy wondering what she would have to eat."
"And what did she have?"
"I don't know, ma'am. She said she had something, but I didn't see it."
"Perhaps you were blinded by the money she gave you. She gave you some, of course?"
"O, not much, ma'am, not much. And I wouldn't have taken a cent if it had not seemed to make her so happy to give it. The pretty, pretty thing! A real lady, whatever they say about her!"
"And happy? You said she was happy, cheerful-looking, and pretty."
"O yes, ma'am; she didn't know what was going to happen. I even heard her sing after she went up-stairs."
I wished that my ears had been attending to their duty that day, and I might have heard her sing too. But the walls between my house and that of the Van Burnams are very thick, as I have had occasion to observe more than once.
"Then she went up-stairs before you left?"
"To be sure, ma'am; what would she do in the kitchen?"
"And you didn't see her again?"
"No, ma'am; but I heard her walking around."
"In the parlors, you mean?"
"Yes, ma'am, in the parlors."
"You did not go up yourself?"
"No, ma'am, I had enough to do below."
"Didn't you go up when you went away?"
"No, ma'am; I didn't like to."
"When did you go?"
"At five, ma'am; I always go at five."
"How did you know it was five?"
"The kitchen clock told me; I wound it, ma'am and set it when the whistles blew at twelve."
"Was that the only clock you wound?"
"Only clock? Do you think I'd be going around the house winding any others?"
Her face showed such surprise, and her eyes met mine so frankly, that I was convinced she spoke the truth. Gratified—I don't know why,—I bestowed upon her my first smile, which seemed to affect her, for her face softened, and she looked at me quite eagerly for a minute before she said:
"You don't think so very bad of me, do you, ma'am?"
But I had been struck by a thought which made me for the moment oblivious to her question. She had wound the clock in the kitchen for her own uses, and why may not the lady above have wound the one in the parlor for hers? Filled with this startling idea, I remarked: